Remembering your mutual love for your children can help you and your ex work together as a team to build a happy life for your children.
Children live in a constant state of change – some are positive, some are difficult, and some, like divorce, can be life-altering. Your divorce can put an immense amount of stress on your kids, even after the papers are finalized. To help them cope and move forward, parents need to prioritize their children’s continued health, happiness, and well-being by focusing on co-parenting.
What Is Co-Parenting?
Co-parenting (like parenting) is all about working together to give your children the care, discipline, guidance, and love they need, but it emphasizes the importance of working with your ex for the sake of your children.
Texas courts encourage co-parenting because it bolsters children’s happiness, emotional well-being, and developmental growth. However, effective co-parenting can also benefit parents.
To begin, co-parenting means there are two of you facing the nearly insurmountable amount of work that comes with parenting. By working together, you share the weight of raising your children, which can bring emotional benefits for each of you and loosen the many parenting-related time constraints you face.
What Do Your Children Need from You?
The aftermath of a divorce or child custody case can leave you in a state of turmoil, and you need to take the steps necessary to take care of yourself. But your children may be struggling just as much. It’s important to focus on what your kids need during this difficult time and to allow this to guide your co-parenting efforts.
Your children have several unique needs that can be affected by divorce and helped with effective co-parenting:
- Your kids need to feel confident and secure about your and their other parent’s love for them, which helps them to adjust more easily to all the changes they’re facing and bolsters their self-esteem.
- Your kids need consistency, which includes similar limits and rules – without excessive restrictions – in both homes.
- Conflict in your kids’ lives can translate to increased anxiety and symptoms of depression, which is an excellent reason for reducing the conflict between you and your ex.
- Your kids are learning how to solve problems of their own, and watching you put a heroic amount of effort into your own problem-solving with co-parenting can inspire them.
- Your kids need to know that many things in their lives will stay the same. You will still spend time together and create fun memories with them and their siblings.
When your actions demonstrate to your children that relationships are worth the effort and that they don’t have to be perfect to be rewarding, you provide them with a strong foundation for building healthy relationships of their own.
No Two Examples of Co-Parenting Are the Same
You and your ex’s co-parenting does not have to look like anyone else’s. Whatever works for you, your ex, and your children is a viable co-parenting plan. It’s also important to remember that no co-parenting plan is perfect. It’s better to proceed with a structure that works well than to endlessly agonize over creating the perfect setup.
Try These Tips for Successful Co-Parenting
Your journey toward effective co-parenting will be unique, but there are several steps you can take to help you get there. Overall, if you allow your care, concern, and love for your children to guide your parenting, you will set the stage for becoming the best co-parent you can be.
Separate Your Own Feelings from Your Co-Parenting
Even if your divorce was exceptionally friendly, you no doubt have some lingering resentment towards your ex, and if your divorce was downright hostile, you likely have considerably more resentment.
If you can separate these feelings, which are valid in and of themselves, from your parenting efforts, it is an important step toward honing your co-parenting skills. And remember that seeking the support you deserve doesn’t have to be put on a back burner – but should be addressed outside the realm of co-parenting.
Regardless of where you and your ex are in your relationship, you can still engage in effective co-parenting by separating the issues and prioritizing your children’s well-being.
Put Your Children’s Needs First
Stay focused on your children. Remember that divorce can be hardest on children. They have lost the safety and comfort of their home, and they have little to no control over their experience.
To make matters more difficult, children are still working on developing coping mechanisms for dealing with serious anxiety, processing emotional pain, and putting events into perspective, which can lead to internalization and increased pain. It is difficult to know how your children are going to react to your divorce until you put the matter to the test.
Your children’s emotional health and well-being in the face of an upset this serious is an ongoing concern. You should remain carefully attuned to their needs and continue to make decisions based on their best interests moving forward.
Keep an eye out for any of the following signs that a child may need more support, such as more one-on-one time with you, professional counseling, or both:
- Grades start slipping, or getting in trouble at school
- Becoming less social or beginning to turn inward
- Suffering friendships
- Having trouble sleeping or losing appetite
- Seeming more anxious or showing signs of depression
- No longer enjoying the activities they once did
Support Your Kids’ Relationship with Your Ex
A key element of fostering your children’s emotional health and well-being is authentically supporting their relationship with their other parent. Your children should not feel like they need to choose between the two of you; anything you can do to relieve them of this burden will benefit them.
Some basic facts apply to nearly every parent-child relationship, and you should always keep them in mind:
- Children fare best when they develop deep, intimate relationships with both of their parents.
- Children love both their parents and want to spend time with both of them.
- Children become anxious when they are required to choose one parent over the other.
In other words, it is in your children’s best interests for you to encourage them to continue to have a warm, loving relationship with their other parent.
Encouraging this relationship can sometimes be difficult, such as when your ex struggles with alcoholism or if he or she betrayed your trust. However, because your children’s well-being is your primary concern, it should help you find it within yourself to forge a path forward that allows you to engage in effective co-parenting.
Remember that Children Crave Consistency
Family courts consider the children’s status quo and how well it serves the children’s needs when making child custody decisions because they recognize the importance of consistency – especially when children are living through a disruptive divorce.
With this in mind, do what you can to build structure and consistency into your children’s schedule:
- Ensure that your children know their schedule with each of you.
- Tell your children who will be picking them up and who will be dropping them off.
- Make sure that your children know what to expect each day.
The more predictable your kids’ lives are, the more comfortably they will adjust to the inevitable changes they face due to divorce.
Part of this involves you and your ex synching your parenting expectations and coordinating your house rules. While your homes needn’t mirror one another, a huge lifestyle gap can leave your children feeling unmoored.
For example, if one of you sets a strict curfew while the other imposes no limits, your kids can experience increased anxiety. Striking the same tone is generally the goal.
You and your ex should discuss and reach a consensus regarding each of the following matters:
- Bedtime goals
- Academic expectations
- Activities that are either off-limits or are limited, such as screen time
- Curfews
- Discipline generally
Make the Transition Between Homes as Seamless as Possible
Going back and forth between homes has the potential to be a constant ordeal for your kids. However, there are things that you can do to make the process less clunky and bolster how well your children adjust:
- Choose a time that is convenient for everyone when handing the kids off.
- Keep the parenting time schedule as consistent as possible.
- To the degree possible, ensure that each child has their own space in each home.
- Outfit each home with the basics so your children don’t need to pack up everything they own in order to move back and forth between homes. The less they have to carry with them and keep track of, the better.
- When you leave your children with their other parent, let them know when you’ll see them next – and vice-versa when you pick them up. For teens who can drive themselves, make sure they know where they need to be and when.
While some families find it very convenient to coordinate drop-off and pickup times with dropping kids off at school and picking them up from school, some children find this jarring. This arrangement requires children to carry everything they need with them, which can be a lot of extra hassle.
Don’t Put Your Children in the Middle
If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it many times – you shouldn’t put your children in the middle when it comes to your divorce or your lingering hard feelings about your ex.
This includes not sharing the ugly details or any gossip with your children, not communicating with your ex through your children, and generally keeping your children out of the mix to the best of your ability.
Improve Communication Between You and Your Ex
To be effective co-parents, you and your ex will need to communicate. Even if you are communicating strictly through electronic means at this point, it doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to improve communications between you over time. Take the steps you can to pave the way toward more open communications as you go.
There are several ways to communicate with your ex after a divorce:
- Emails – If you need distance from your ex-spouse and are not ready to jump right back into instant communication, email is a great option. The email format allows you to share information while maintaining a formal or impersonal tone (which helps avoid conflict). However, emails lack the immediacy of other forms of communication.
- Texts – Texting is a more immediate means of communication than email, and it lacks email’s more formal tone. Texting is a good option if you are ready to communicate in a somewhat friendlier format or need to relay information quickly.
- Co-Parenting Apps – There are also highly effective co-parenting apps that allow parents to coordinate their own busy schedules with those of their children and to message one another about scheduling issues.
- Phone Calls – A phone call is a far more personal mode of communication, and if you are not ready for that, you should not push yourself. If the situation is an emergency, however, a phone call is likely to be your best option.
- Face-to-Face – Communicating about co-parenting face-to-face can be extremely efficient and effective, but it can quickly become heated if you are still working through your post-divorce emotions.
No matter how you choose to communicate with your ex, remember that communicating through your children puts them in the middle of your problems and is not in their best interests.
The best co-parents focus on efficiency and effectiveness rather than perfection. In other words, find a system that works for you and stick with it. Over time, you will work out the kinks. You may find communicating openly with one another becomes less and less challenging over time.
Shoot for a Civil Relationship with Your Ex
Regardless of how acrimonious your divorce was and how raw your feelings toward your ex are, the bottom line is that you are permanently intertwined through your children. There are many occasions that will bring you together in the future:
- Your children’s sporting events and performances
- School activities, including proms and homecomings
- Graduations
- Weddings
- The birth of grandchildren
This list could go on and on. The degree to which you’re able to put your animosity toward your ex behind you, the more you honor your children and their accomplishments, which is always the right thing to do.
When you do what it takes to be an effective co-parent, you help repair the relationship between you and your ex, and while this doesn’t necessarily mean perfection, it does mean progress.
Remember that You’re on the Same Side
While you and your ex very likely have your differences, when it comes to your children, you share the same goals: supporting their health, well-being, and happiness. Keeping this in mind as you move forward can make a big difference in how effective you are as co-parents.
You can take all of the following steps to bolster your relationship with your ex – if not for yourselves, then for your children:
- Keep your tone as friendly as you can. If a business tone is the best you can do, use that.
- Instead of making demands or blanket statements, make inquiries and requests.
- Listen to what your ex has to say, which demonstrates that you’re open to considering their views – even if you don’t ultimately agree.
- Employ restraint instead of blowing up at the slightest provocation. If you get into a situation where you feel like your ex is intentionally provoking you, take a break or walk away.
- Communicate with your ex consistently, which will help you overcome any related anxiety and improve your ability to communicate effectively over time.
- Keep your conversations focused on your children. There is no reason to rehash old disagreements or reopen old wounds.
- Stay calm. If your spouse attempts to engage you in a battle, a neutral response can be disarming and may help you get back on track.
- Ask your ex for their opinion. Parenting is challenging, and it’s not uncommon to face a crossroads when you have no idea what the right decision is for your children. The only other person who knows them as well as you do and who is as invested in their well-being as you are is your ex, and having their opinion can mean a lot.
Moving Forward with Co-Parenting
While your marriage to your ex didn’t work out, you did manage to have beautiful children together that you both adore, which is quite an accomplishment. Remembering your mutual love for your children can help you and your ex work together as a team to build a happy life for your children.
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